Televised testimony will have a profound effect on public opinion. If the hearings should result in impeachment, an absence of a two-thirds majority in the Senate for conviction is immaterial.

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As with Watergate, there is a better than even chance that the majority of voters will see this president for what he is and support conviction, if not soundly reject him at the polls in 2020.

Blowback against the Democrats is a specious bluff, unconvincingly purported by the GOP. Voters rightly held the Republicans responsible for blatant overreach that resulted in President Clinton’s impeachment because the “underlying” crime wasn’t a crime. It was morally reprehensible and irresponsible behavior, to be sure.

Lying under oath about a non-crime is still a crime, but it’s not the duplicitous, dangerous, borderline disloyal self-dealing perfidy of Trump.

J. Kevin Jones, Rancho Palos Verdes

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To the editor: Trump may be stonewalling Congress, but Republicans in both the House and the Senate are equally obstructive.

If Democrats presented evidence that Trump was Dracula, Republicans would demand more than circumstantial evidence. They would require the president to turn into a bat right in front of them.

Even if that happened, they would probably call it “fake vampirism” and let it go.